Page 61 of Bad Luck Bride

“Yes,” he agreed, but he didn’t move.

Sadly, she couldn’t seem to find the will to follow her own advice. “We should both go in,” she said instead, a rather craven attempt to put all the responsibility on him, to get him to do what she could not find the strength to do herself. “We really should.”

For some unfathomable reason, that made him laugh softly under his breath, his teeth dazzling white in the moonlight.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Hell, Kay,” he said as he leaned closer to her, “when have you and I ever done what we should?”

“Never,” she admitted with a sigh. “What did you—”

She broke off in the midst of her question, the same question that had been nagging at her for the past twenty-four hours. But though she was sure she was probably going to regret asking, she could not resist. “What did you mean the other night when you said you were marrying Lady Pamela for escape?” she whispered. “What are you escaping from?”

Still smiling a little, he put his hand on the side of her waist, then slowly, ever so slowly, giving her plenty of time to draw back, he slid his arm around her. “My fate.”

She frowned, too aware of his touch to make sense of his reply. “What do you mean? What fate?”

“You, Kay,” he muttered, his free hand sliding up her back to the nape of her neck, his thumb pressing beneath her chin to lift her face. “I mean you.”

With that, he bent his head and kissed her.

The touch of his lips sent Kay hurtling backward in time and space, out of a garden folly in Berkshire to a ball in Chiswick, where Devlin had taken her hand, led her into a boxwood maze, and given her the first kiss of her life.

Devlin, she thought with a jolt of the same frantic yearning she’d felt for him in her youth. This was Devlin—his mouth, his embrace, his hard, strong body, blotting fourteen years of loneliness, shame, and disgrace from her mind as if they had never happened.

Suddenly, she was eighteen again, running out to meet him in the dark, with her heart beating like a mad thing, coming into his arms with exaltation and joy surging through her veins, returning his kiss willingly as burning, uncontrollable desire coursed through her body. In his arms, she wasn’t a chubby, freckle-faced social failure or a ruined, dried-up spinster. She was beautiful, desirable, wanted.

It was glorious.

His mouth opened, urging hers to do the same, and when she parted her lips, the arm he had around her waist tightened, urging her even closer. Willingly, eagerly, she came, her hands slid up his chest and into his hair as she rose on her toes, pressing her body to his.

Against her mouth, he groaned, and she reveled in the sound, raking her fingers through the thick, unruly strands, tasting his kiss with all the abandon of the girl she’d been.

But then, his hips stirred against hers, and she felt the hardness of him. She jerked as if he burned, striving for sanity.

In less than a month, she was getting married, and not to the man holding her in his arms, but to a man whose one and only kiss had felt nothing like this, a man who did not evoke desire in her body and wreak havoc in her soul. A man who would never be able to break her heart.

She tore her mouth from his. “We can’t do this, Devlin,” she gasped. “It’s madness.”

“Absolute madness,” he agreed, his arm tightening around her waist, his free hand caressing the nape of her neck. Suddenly, his fingers cupped the back of her head, and before she could reply, he recaptured her mouth, sending desire coursing throughout her body. She rose on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, relishing this kiss, glorying in it, and sanity floated away on the spring breeze like so much flotsam.

She’d forgotten, she realized as she raked her hands through his hair, what desire felt like. But Devlin was making her remember, in the taste of his mouth and the hard feel of his body pressed to hers.

How, she wondered wildly. How on earth could she ever have forgotten this?

“What is going on here?”

The sound of that demanding feminine voice was like a bucket of ice water being dumped on her head, shocking her out of her euphoric haze. Devlin must have felt the same, for he broke the kiss, lifted his head, and swore.

Kay opened her eyes and felt another jolt of shock at the sight of Devlin’s grim countenance. He was looking past her at the doorway,and when she turned her head in that direction, she found herself staring into the beautiful, horrified face of Lady Pamela Stirling.

Making things worse, the girl was not alone. Wilson stood behind her, staring past her shoulder. As his eyes met Kay’s, she saw his lips press together in a tight line and his expression turn cold, so cold that a shiver ran down Kay’s back.

Oh, no, she thought, sick with dismay as she realized what they must have just witnessed.Oh, no, no, no.

Confirming that realization, Lady Pamela’s face crumpled, she let out a sob, pressed her hand over her mouth, and turned away.

Wilson moved sideways to let her pass, then he looked at Kay, and with that look, she knew there would be no discussions, no reconciliations, and probably no wedding.

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